Oregon’s top nursing home regulators received repeated warnings and even acknowledged privately that the coronavirus could decimate a Southeast Portland care facility but failed to take fast and aggressive action before the first 10 residents died, an investigation by The Oregonian/OregonLive has found.
State
officials were told as early as March 25, about a month after Oregon’s
first case, that Healthcare at Foster Creek was struggling to protect
its residents from coronavirus, records obtained by the newsroom show.
A
caregiver who worked in the facility filed a complaint that day,
warning the Oregon Department of Human Services of inadequate safeguards
and impending death.
“We have residents who I believe will not survive and I’m fearful for them,” the caregiver wrote.
A
top state regulator, Jack Honey, expressed alarm over other alleged
problems at the facility. “And just between you and me,” Honey later
wrote to a colleague, “I am so worried about this erupting into a
devastating outbreak.”
That anxiety was prophetic.
Coronavirus
cases linked to Healthcare at Foster Creek quickly ballooned,
eventually infecting 120 people and killing 34 Oregonians. By the time
the last resident was evacuated May 5, the facility accounted for about
one out of every four deaths statewide, and it remains Oregon’s
deadliest outbreak.
The
newsroom’s investigation found that despite warning signs state
officials took days and in some cases weeks to act, losing critical time
to help slow spread inside the nursing home.
Blaming
a lack of protective equipment for state regulators, authorities waited
nine days to inspect the facility after the March 25 complaint but
inexplicably found no violations during their 47-minute visit – only to
return one week later to uncover a slew of problems, including some
outlined in the initial and subsequent complaints.
Among
them: caregivers wearing the same masks for entire shifts, employees
not washing hands between interactions with residents, and workers
moving between units with and without known coronavirus infections –
potentially serving as conduits to spread the dangerous disease.
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| Kevin Fortune was a resident at Healthcare at Foster Creek when he got sick with the coronavirus and died. Fortune's brother is now suing the nursing home. Here Fortune is in his 1979 high school graduation photo. Photo courtesy Fortune family |
“Every
day of delay was spreading it,” said Harrington, who has been
researching senior care oversight for two decades. “They had the
authority. I don’t understand why they didn’t act sooner.”
The
state could have put in place a temporary management company,
immediately gone into the facility, or sent inspectors to monitor Foster
Creek’s workers, Harrington said.
“I feel sad when I see a leadership failure,” Harrington said. “They could have saved lives.”
The
newsroom’s findings, based on more than a dozen interviews and more
than a thousand pages of documents obtained through public records
requests, underscore the chaos of the state’s overall response to the
pandemic in the first months after coronavirus emerged Feb. 28 in
Oregon.
The
state became overwhelmed by an onslaught of unemployment claims filed
by laid-off workers. It repeatedly held back information vital to the
public. But nowhere was Oregon’s failure more stark than at Healthcare
at Foster Creek.
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| Healthcare at Foster Creek, now closed, saw the largest and most fatal coronavirus outbreak in the state. Kevin Fortune was one of the residents who died. His brother is now suing the nursing home. July 3, 2020. Beth Nakamura/Staff |
In
Washington, a nursing home outbreak near Seattle drew international
headlines and accounted for more than half of all known coronavirus
deaths across America by mid March. In Oregon, officials already had two
weeks’ experience responding to an outbreak at a veterans home in
Lebanon that ultimately infected 38 and killed 8. (Click to Continue)
‘A catastrophic outbreak’: How Oregon failed to slow coronavirus before death overtook nursing home
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